


From the Ashes

by Loxxlay



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Infinity Gems, Post-Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Post-Thor: The Dark World, Thanos threat, Torture, headcanon heavy sorry XD, loki & nebula, suicidal implications, tagged loki/nebula but there is zero romance, though as per my usual there is no explicit graphic torture XD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 19:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3740389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loxxlay/pseuds/Loxxlay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Ronan’s failure, Nebula desperately seeks to steal the Orb in hopes of appeasing the wrath of Thanos. She does not expect an old acquaintance to steal it first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> So this is an idea that came to me after reading the prelude comic to Guardians of the Galaxy. It was enhanced by both the release of that movie as well as my headcannons for Loki post-TDW. You don’t need to have read that prelude comic to understand this, but (I highly recommend it for those of you who love Loki/Nebula parallels, and) I do reference it in the fic. 
> 
> As always, hope you enjoy! :)

…

_From the Ashes_

…

Nebula curses to herself, and stumbles into a secluded corner to survey the damage to her arm.

Connected only by the cybernetic metal, her hand severed from her wrist causes little pain, but phantom agony surfaces from years prior.

Tearing the netting from her eye and shoulder, stewing in a tank for days, learning to cope with metal replacements rather than flesh and blood—it all comes back in a rush.

She reminds herself that if she loses focus now, everything could go wrong.

Shoving memories to the back of her mind, she works on unlocking the door. The bomb she planted on the other side of the building should explode within moments and give enough distraction for her plan.

Just as she punches in the code, red lights flash and a shrill sound roars across the corridors.

That's her bomb.

She hurries and dives behind a wall, as guards trot down the hallway towards where she came. Satisfied, she straightens and slips past their backs into the next hallway.

There's only three remaining before the safe.

It will be hard to come ahead with only one hand, but she trusts her instincts. Resolved for a fight, she walks towards them. Two guards raise their weapons, but she darts to the side, throwing a knife into one’s throat. In the same motion, she catches the second guard with an elbow to his face.

The third’s gun grazes her shoulder, but he doesn’t expect the bullet to bounce against the metal that comprises her bones and muscles. It stings, but not enough to stop her.

Nebula slams the second knife into his forehead, and like that, all three lie dead at her feet.

After retrieving both knives, she turns her attention to the safe containing the Orb. One more barrier before her. The fingerprint and additional coding she prepared easily override the security shutdown on the building, and within seconds, the lock opens.

The Orb lies right before her.

She rushes forward.

Just as her hand closes around the Orb, a green wave shines over the podium  revealing nothing.

The Orb isn't there.

It was just an—

“I thought you might come here.”

—illusion.

Nebula whirls around and finds a fourth guard standing in the entrance.

The man mindlessly throws the Orb up in the air and catches it as he steps carefully toward her. The same green light illuminates his form, until it fades into black hair and pale skin. His eyes are as bright as the cast magic—and he smirks knowingly at her.

“Fallen from your dearest father's esteem, have you?” Loki says.

Teeth barred, Nebula dives forward with every intent to rip him limb from limb for the Orb, revenge for her father a secondary goal, but she knows before the wave of green that it's another illusion.

That's what he is—a master of deception, of tricking and hiding—and Nebula only just manages to catch herself against the wall when she collides into thin air.

From behind her, Loki chuckles. “Is this really the right place for hysterics?”

Growling, she turns towards the sound of his voice and hurls a knife, aiming for his heart. But as her mind begins to accept that he is alive and he is here and that there are more important matters than killing him, she only uses half of her momentum.

Unsurprisingly he catches the knife. When she makes no move to attack again, he holds it out to her, expression the perfect picture of innocence.

Armed with another, she doesn’t take it.

“Come now,” Loki says, “you’re a sensible thief. The bomb was a nice touch, but that won’t last forever. Do you really insist on fighting me here?”

She doesn’t like it, but he's right.

In the distance, the alarm still rings, and it will only be a few more minutes before the Nova Corp decipher the distraction for what it is.

“What are you saying?” she asks, but her eyes lock onto the Orb in Loki's grasp—she can't leave it behind.

That weapon is her only hope now.

Loki notices her focus. His smile spreads into a playful gloat, and he clutches the Orb to his chest. At a wave of his hand holding her knife, a perfect replica appears on the podium, right where it's supposed to be. No one will know the Orb is missing.

“I had already planned to retrieve this secretly,” he says. “If you come elsewhere with me, I promise to allow you a fight.”

She still stands strong, ready to fight or die trying—because without that Orb, death is preferable to what’s coming for her. “I don’t have to listen to you.”

“If the Orb is what you want, you might find more interest in what else I have. Is it not worth the risk?” His white teeth gleam under the light.

Nebula only tightens her grip on her knife. This is the creature who promised to retrieve the Tesseract for Thanos, who waged a war against insignificant weaklings, who _failed_. Thanos had had told her of his death during the Dark Elf attack, and now he stands alive, with no Tesseract and no conquered realm.

But, she thinks, he stands alive, and _Thanos does not know._

“I remember you swore on _everything_ that Thanos would have the Tesseract. I have no reason to trust you. Why should I?” Her hands shake from her tight grip on the blade.

Loki spreads his arms, palms facing upward, in a gesture of peace. “Because we are alike, you and I, so I know you must be tired. Tired of lies and betrayals. Tired of hatred. Only a monster longs for nothing more.” He pauses and smiles wearily, eyes never leaving her face. “Are you a monster, Nebula?”

An angelic voice in her heart whispers _yes_.

It sounds suspiciously like Gamora.

Nebula inclines her head, and finally takes back her knife. “Fine. Get us out of here.”

There’s not much else to lose.

…

_“Do you know what it's like to fall without an end?”_

_Taken aback, Nebula pauses from where she cleans his chained wrists of the blood and grime._

_The Jotun never speaks._

_Even though the sound of others speaking no longer overwhelms his senses the way it did when he came fresh from the Void, his voice still rises less often than he eats. Until now, she half-believed him to be forever muted, a shell of the person he might once have been._

_Loki's green eyes sharpen as the time passes, waiting for an answer that she will not give._

_A sigh finally passes from his lips, and metal clinks as his hands clench in his lap. “Falling is panic,” he continues, “terror choking your breath, a silent scream gripping your throat. An end just seconds away. Finite. Permanent.”_

_She knows it well. She remembers her heart suffocating in her chest as the ground disappeared beneath her feet, as her beloved sister released her grasp and shrunk smaller and smaller, as Nebula fell lower and lower. Her shriek hadn't been loud enough to drown the shrillness of her terror._

_“Is that what you felt?” she asks after he says no more. “When you fell for months? Panic?”_

_The corners of his lips twitch, but the smile doesn't quite catch._

_“No,” he says softly. “The Norns cursed me to fall without an end. Panic does not exist in eternity.” His eyes stare through his lap, through the ground, into an unseen abyss that exists in only his memories._

_She hesitates. She has grown comfortable with silence while she tends to him, but at the same time, curiosity tempts. Eventually, she lowers the dirtied cloth. “Then what did you feel in the Void?”_

_For a while, his gaze remains locked far away in the distance, and she thinks that he won't answer._

_Then, his dry lips crack as they spread into a smile. “What else would one feel in eternity? Absolutely nothing. Except, perhaps, the desire for an end.”_

_Nebula's brow draws together. It's the most he has spoken since she met him, but she feels even less assured of his sanity._

_“Do you know what it’s like to let go?” he asks._

_Her frown deepens. “I know what it's like to be thrown.” At the glint she sees in his eyes, a glint of hopelessness that she's far too familiar with, she takes extra care to fasten the bindings on his wrists, before leaving for the day._

…

Loki disguises the bodies as casualties of her bomb.

She keeps her eyes pinned to his back, ready for the moment he betrays her trust and disappears, the same as he did to her father so long ago.

He never does.

He uses magic to hide them from plain sight, as they make their escape, and it feels wrong, to be so exposed yet so hidden at once. His magic always feels unnatural.

But Nebula doesn't complain when they reach a secluded area under a bridge, because Loki has gotten them out without any trouble, and that's likely more than she could have done.

Besides, now that they are safe, Nebula has more important concerns.

“So what now?” she asks coolly.

“What indeed,” Loki agrees.

His hand grips the Orb like a lifeline, clearly aware that Nebula intends to steal it upon her first chance.

“I suppose it depends on you. Judging from your physical state—” his eyes scan the stump of her arm— “you know a fight will not end well for you.”

While he speaks, her good hand fingers the knife at her belt, calculating her options.

He's right again.

Even if she didn't lack a hand, Loki would pose a fairly decent challenge to her. He looks unwell, but only because the illness of the Void has permanently marked his face. Nebula does not doubt that Loki has risen to his fullest power once again.

“What are you offering?” she asks instead, eyes clasped to the Orb as tightly as his hand. “You should know as well as I do that death is preferable to not having that.”

“I am offering an alternative to death.”

“You have no Tesseract,” she hisses, “no army, nothing. Your only achievement that I can see is being alive.” She holds out her hand, delighted when he cringes away. “Give me the Orb, and you can live as you have been. I won't tell him you were here.”

Loki offers her a private little smile.

It gives her pause. She's never seen him smile this way.

“You only knew me at my lowest, Nebula. I have more than you could possibly imagine.”

She remembers Ronan.

Dazzling, wild power ripping the air as he took that same Orb, unprotected, into his palm, and threatened Thanos, words like poison infecting her heart. She remembers the tantalizing taste of hope in the back of her throat, her eyes wide and delirious as everything she knew to be true shattered in front of her.

She also remembers Ronan's ship falling to the ground.

Loki was never even more than a pawn to her father.

She shakes her head. “I don’t believe you.”

Loki sighs, and step towards her. He keeps the Orb at his side, but his other hand rests on her shoulder. She tenses—last time he was this close, there had been so much blood.

“You are scared,” he notes. “It’s understandable.”

Heat rises to her face, and she glares its fire at him. “I’m not. _You_ , on the other hand, _should_ be.”

“I only ask for a fair chance.”

The Orb is in her reach. She could get it. She stands good odds to escape him.

Before she can think to slam her knee below his waist, he squeezes her shoulder in a way that she’s never felt before--not even from Gamora.

“I promise to be quick, clean. I won't make it last,” he whispers, “if he comes.”

Her eyes narrow. “That’s more than I ever offered you.”'

“Come now, I've already kept my first promise to you,” Loki says, half laughing. It sounds so strange to hear him laugh with mirth and not despair. “We're both hunted now. Can we not be allies?”

She takes a breath, considering the options.

She has nothing.

She feels nothing but fear.

Once, this man chained in a damp cave told her what it was like to fall without end, and the idea repulsed her to the marrow in her bones—that someone could stare into infinite stars in a night sky and be too blind to see anything but darkness.

Is it so very terrible to want to give this a chance?

“I'll look at what you have to show me,” she says, “but then I’m done.” A part of her wonders how he keeps persuading her to take one extra step. The other part wonders how many more steps there are to take.

Loki nods approvingly, and he backs away, the Orb once more out of reach. “I have a ship not far from here. We'll take it to Knowhere.” His eyes fall to her wrist. “See about another prosthetic.”

…

_Thanos gives the order the same way another might order supplies._

_Obedience weighs heavy on her tongue when she enters the rocky chamber, watching as the Jotun turns to look at her. He looks healthier. His pale skin glows like moonlight in the dark, rather than the sickly yellow shade it was two months ago. Even the green in his eyes looks brighter._

_Nebula pauses in the doorway, unusually silent._

_They've been talking._

_Usually about nothing more than the dark, or the taste of the food she brings, or her missions—one time, he even asked about Gamora, which kindled a fair amount of jealousy, but not enough for her to show._

_This time, the Jotun knows something is wrong the moment she manages to close the door behind her. “What is it?” he asks._

_Turning, she sees acute fear in his eyes, eyes that watch her every movement with an obsessiveness that wasn't there before. She wants to tell him the truth, that she's never had to acknowledge her target as an actual person before._

_But her own fear is probably greater than his, sheltered from her father as he is._

_“You're from Asgard,” she states, waiting for his agreement._

_He frowns, hands curling closer to his body. “I suppose I lived there for a time. Why?”_

_She smells mildew and grime and metallic blood in here, and the words on her lips taste sour. But more than that, she knows that she can adapt to this discomfort. She has before. When Gamora threw her from the edge and she saw death, Thanos engraved her heart with metal and made her body stronger._

_As much as the modifications to her body sickened her, they're more valuable now than whatever distaste she felt at the time._

_“What do you know about the Tesseract?” she asks._

_When his eyes shut down and narrow, she knows it's the start to something terrible._

…

“Has the prosthetic agreed with you?” Loki asks.

Nebula pulls her gaze from the glass of the hull to stare at the foreign metal protruding from her wrist. It doesn’t quite match. While the hand does glint silver, the underlying tone is warmer, golder than the rest of her arm.

But she feels more dexterity and speed in this hand than she felt in the last. Loki spent generously.

“The color leaves room for improvement,” Loki says, as he sits beside her, “though surely I attached it properly. I’ve done so before. With different technology, of course, but nonetheless.”

Her eyes flicker towards him. Out of all the times they’ve spoken, this is the closest he ever came to freely volunteering information of his life. “You never told me why you left Asgard,” she says.

Smirking, Loki knits his fingers together and rests his chin. “That never stopped you from asking.”

Nausea grips her throat. All over him, she sees wounds without scars, tears without tracks, pain without proof. He can’t possibly expect her to apologize, not when the same would have befallen her had she rejected her orders.

Yet it fills her with regret--no, _guilt_ \--and that in turn, makes her angry. She has no reason to feel guilty. “I never decided. Whether you don’t talk because the answers are terrible or whether you’re afraid they’re not.”

“You believe I am weak.” A breath puffs out of his lips that’s not quite a laugh. “You think I exaggerate my pain in comparison to whose? Yours?”

Her teeth grind together. She hates that he can salvage shreds of expressions so much better than she can, rip secrets from her mere gestures and words. “There is _no_ amount of pain that could make me let go, like you did.”

Loki leans back in his seat. “Are you trying to prove that you are stronger? Because--what, you can endure hardship? You can struggle all your life, and still draw breath at the end of each day? Am I supposed to applaud your resilience?”

She frowns. “I don’t think--”

“The man I believed my father was the King of Asgard,” Loki says, smiling through tightly clenched teeth and brittle words. “He pitted me against his true son for my entire life, and when I came short in the end, he left me to the wolves. Would you expect me to hold on--to a life that meant nothing but lies?”

Unimpressed, she raises an eyebrow at him. “You lived as a prince.”

“I pretended perhaps.”

“And your father hit you. He had you live in fear. Starved you, hated you.”

Loki rises to his feet, hands clenched in fists of fury. “He is not my father. He raised me as a political tool. He drove me to hate my own being with every fiber in my body, what difference is there?” His tongue darts to lick his lips. “You have never known _anything_ but the barren rock on which you lived. You don’t know the delicacies of being clean, of having _enough_. You don’t know what it’s like to have them _ripped away from you_.”

“You ripped them away from yourself,” Nebula spits. “You’re an ungrateful coward.”

His eyes blaze fire in warning.

She braces herself for a fight from her seat, limbs tense and ready. The Orb sits on the table just a few feet away. If she can overpower him, just for a second, she will have the upper hand.

Then, suddenly, he’s laughing. His shoulders relax, and he smiles wickedly at her.

“‘Ungrateful,’ you say,” he says, as if testing the word on his tongue. He laughs again and retrieves the Orb on his way to the back of the ship. “You’re welcome for your prosthetic.”

…

_The ragged shreds of his breath sound hoarse and whiny, echoing through the cave._

_Nebula stares at her hands, sheathed in a fresh layer of blood, wondering, as always, what Gamora would have done._

_Before her mission, Gamora spoke of Loki with pity in her eyes and fondness in her voice. That was back when Loki had allegedly never spoken a word to anyone—what had they shared in those precious few weeks that connected them so strongly?_

_She hates Gamora for having used everything Nebula ever owned._

_“You said you knew,” Loki chokes through his own blood, “knew what it was like to be thrown.”_

_Nebula stares. Her heart was made into metal in order to survive. She owes him nothing._

_“Tell me. It's so quiet.”_

_She remembers how much he once preferred the silence._

_“Please,” he adds. "At least speak so that I know this is real."_

_An unwelcome emotion slips into a sigh. Will it truly matter in the end if she gives him a few moments of comfort? Steeling herself for the memory, she leans back and lets the cave walls drop into a mushy floor, a sunless sky. Beneath them, fog obscures the height of the plants.  Her fall had lasted roughly half a dozen miles._

_“My sister and I were on a mission,” Nebula says._

_Loki does his best to hush his harsh breathing. “Gamora?”_

_“Yes." She pauses as the fold of events replays before her. “There were rumors of a weapon there. A powerful weapon. My father turned it into a race between us, to see who could retrieve it first. Halfway there, we decided to fight instead. I bested her. She hung at the edge of a solid drop. I went to help her up, and she threw me off.”_

_The Jotun remains quiet for a moment. “Not very appreciative,” he says finally._

_Nebula shrugs. Her fall led to strength in metal. Flesh and muscle is so much softer, more vulnerable than her current body. Besides, positions reversed, she would have done the same._

_“Sentiment is useless here,” she tells the Jotun. “The only thing that counts is how to survive. You’ll learn.”_

_He chokes a gargled laugh. “You might have noticed--surviving is not my highest priority.”_

_“It will be,” she says, voice flat._

_"Forgive me if I doubt.”_

_Nebula glares at him until he looks away. It unsettles her when he says those things because she starts to remember him as a person and not just some tool her father wants. The reminder invokes an alarming amount of pity._

_“Is that when you became so heartless?” he asks, breaking the silence. “When Gamora threw you?”_

_"Unlike you, I didn't choose what happened," she says. "Maybe I just don't care much for cowards."_

_Loki smiles. “If you cared for anything, you would put a coward out of his misery.”_

_Uninterested in the turn of their conversation, Nebula eyes how he fares from the wounds. The Jotun has stopped shifting, and his breathing has calmed. She retrieves the knife from her belt._

_It's time to start again._

…

They avoid each other after that.

She spends the days it takes them to reach their destination cataloging his habits. He never leaves the Orb unattended. When he sleeps on rare occasion, he hides it in his bag, and sleeps with it locked between his arms. He doesn’t trust her.

She doesn’t blame him.

When he settles on a couch a few hours before they’ll arrive, Nebula clutches the sheath of her knife and waits.

His breathing lengthens, and his face contorts as though he’s in pain. Nightmares always plague him. It’s just a matter of how long he can keep them at bay before he wakes.

Considering his twitching, there won’t be much time.

She slips the knife from her belt and creeps towards him. When he doesn’t startle awake, she straddles him carefully, sinking her weight on top of him and pressing the knife to his throat. Then she unsheathes a second knife for when he awakes.

The touch of metal upon his skin is what wakes him.

His eyes snap open, and his head jerks forward into her blade. The blood gushing down his neck keeps him down.

When one hand rises to throw her off, she uses the better angle to slam her knee down on his wrist. It crunches audibly.

“Hah,” he gasps and thrashes helplessly.

Green eyes linger in the distance, and she wonders if his mind remains in the nightmare. It would explain the ease it took her to subdue him. She shakes her head of the thoughts--she doesn’t want to think of what he sees in those nightmares, whether he sees her father, whether he sees her--and she pins his other hand beneath her knee.

It takes her only seconds to search the bag and find it empty. No Orb.

Cursing, she smacks the flat of her free knife across his cheek. “Where is it?” she shrieks at him.

His eyes clear of sleep. “What?”

“Where is the Orb?”

She needs it.

She cannot betray Thanos any longer.

She cannot trust this _coward_ to grant her a painless death if she needs it, and she certainly cannot trust him to overpower her father.

 _No one_ bests Thanos--the entire universe knows it. Even Ronan with all his brilliant power failed.

There is no life for her without the Orb.

Loki stares at her. The blood on his neck flows in stark contrast to the pallor of his skin. Peace lies in his eyes--peace she’s never seen in him before. His limbs no longer thrash.

“ _Answer me!_ ”

Nebula strikes him a third time. A red welt forms on his cheek.

“Are you going to kill me?” he asks calmly.

Her breath draws short.

“Well?”

She digs the knife deeper into his throat. “I _can_ kill you.”

“You should,” Loki says. He smiles, full of teeth. “The Orb is here somewhere, this you know. You can find it, given time. Then, you can take this ship and return to your father with the gem he seeks and the corpse of the one who betrayed him. He would have you back.” His expression softens, and his eyes look dead. “He may even find some worth in you.”

Her hands tremble wildly. Both knives inch their way into his neck, and she can almost taste her father’s praise for a job well done, for being betterthan the sister who betrayed them. Her metal heart _aches_ to hear his pride.

“What’s stopping you?” Loki whispers. “You would have everything. You would be his only daughter. I heard his Chitauri pet was killed--you would be the only one left that he trusts. And all you have to do is _kill me_.”

Nebula grinds her teeth together and grips the knives so tightly she can feel her own fingers digging into her palms. His words invoke the strongest imagery in her mind, and she wants it so badly, so, so, so badly.

His throat lies bare under her hand, the one he gave her, and he doesn’t fight, doesn’t even flinch at the touch of his life drawing to a close. His goal has never been to survive--not like hers, she who sucks the last breath out of every opportunity because surviving is all she ever knew how to do.

_Only a monster longs for nothing more._

Hating and lying and stealing and killing and selfish ( _alone_ )--she can’t slash his neck.

“Do it,” Loki says.

She _can’t_.

With a pained breath, she tosses the knives away. They clatter on the floor as she hurls herself off him, head in her hands, and heart in her throat.

Because once, Loki did have everything, and he let go.

Once, she thought she only had to best Gamora to win the love of her father.

After the initial praise, it will burn until all she has are the ashes of her father’s approval. She will be just where she started--alone and hateful and ready to leap on the next chance she gets to escape.

‘A life that meant nothing but lies,’ Loki called it.

And Nebula knows Thanos isn’t her father and Gamora isn’t her sister and maybe Gamora does love her, but none of it means anything now.

The universe is so much bigger than it looks.

She breathes in deeply and finally turns to look upon the one who almost died by her hand, the one who saved her from the endless, hollow cycle with just a few clever words.

Loki has sat up. His one hand massages the sprained wrist, but when he notices her gaze, he smiles. “I thought you might choose this way,” he says, voice soft--and kind.

He would forgive her if she asked.

For the first time, it matters.

…

The halls of Asgard shine golden and loom tall.

They trespass, Loki and she, across the polished marble floor down endless stretches of halls. The light from Asgard’s star beams through the windows and illuminates the bright blue of her skin.

Nebula feels suffocating discomfort here. As if the very air seeks to remove all of her defenses and expose her for what she really is--a criminal, a killer, a monster. They walk unseen to other’s eyes, akin to thieves in the dark of night, and she notes that Loki has already quickened his pace.

Living here would require so much courage.

“Down this way,” Loki says under his breath and gestures to the descending stairs to their left.

She follows him wordlessly.

Down below the palace, the steps bring them to vaults concealing treasures and artefacts and priceless gems--items that would undoubtedly interest Thanos if he ever saw them.

Cold and almost sterile, the air presses down on her shoulders. There’s a scent of powerful magic in the air, something she instinctively identifies with Thanos. When they reach the end of the final row of stairs, she finally sees why.

The sight steals the breath from her lungs.

The gauntlet Thanos tirelessly desired stands on a podium at the very end of the hall, but that’s old knowledge and not what captivates her. Moving forward with a will of their own, her feet take her past the thin nooks in the wall.

She passes the Tesseract.

The Aether.

The scepter.

Her vision blurs, and it takes her too long to remember what tears are and how to rid herself of them. In her peripheral vision, she catches a smug smile spreading across Loki’s face. Nebula jerks around to face him. “How?” she manages to say. “The--the Aether--the Collector had it. We know he did.”

“Your informants are operating on outdated information,” Loki says with a smile.

The destruction of the Collector’s tower moments before Ronan had arrived--she remembers seeing it. She remembers glimpses of Gamora standing close, perhaps intending to sell the Orb there. With all of the confusion during the battle, Loki could easily have swept in and stolen the Aether unnoticed.

“And the scepter? That was lost on Midgard,” she says.

“What can I say? I’ve been quite busy.” Loki laughs, moving towards the final stand. He retrieves the Orb from his bag (so it was there all along, hidden under his spell, right under her nose), and Nebula abruptly realizes how powerful and so very subtle his illusions are.

Only when Loki sets the Orb in the stand does she actually count. Four infinity gems and the gauntlet.

There are only two items required for the limitless power Thanos craved.

Thanos thinks Loki _is dead_.

Her heart comes to life, pounding incessantly in her chest, and adrenaline pumps through what blood remains in her body. She doesn’t understand this feeling, she doesn’t know what to do with it, and it frightens her.

She retreats several steps, and her eyes dart towards the stairs. Everything is happening too quickly. “He won’t kill you,” she says, barely breathing. “He will come for you and do everything but kill you. And everything he wants will be right here.”

His arm encircles her shoulders, squeezing the odd reassurance that she barely recognizes. “He will come for Asgard last. By then, he will be too late.”

“Everything he wants is right in this room!”

“Yes,” Loki agrees, “but he doesn’t know that.”

Nebula’s fists clench, and she wonders if it was a mistake to come here, to join his mad game. She raises her eyebrows, half incredulous, half desperate to hear him live up to his words.

Loki gestures to the Aether. “Once the Collector has time to take a full stock, your informants will report the loss to Thanos. And why would anyone suspect the generous All-Father who so graciously left it there in the first place?”

Steering her by the shoulder, he stops them in front of the next infinity stone.

“Rumor has it that the scepter still belongs to Hydra. My brother will hear of that rumor soon enough. By the time he realizes its disappearance, no one will know where to look.”

Nebula swallows. Her heart still pounds, but she begins to understand why.

This emotion is _hope_.

“As for the Orb,” Loki says, “Nova Prime will eventually find its safe empty, and Thanos will know you took it. He will never know you brought it here, to a dead man.” He releases her shoulder and circles around to face her. “You see?” Loki says. “Thanos has no need to challenge Asgard for the Tesseract until he obtains the other gems. And he will never find them.”

When she meets Loki’s gaze, his eyes are bright and fiery.

Nebula remembers the pitiful heap of flesh and bones she tended to, tortured, and watched sent away on a bold mission to conquer the Earth and retrieve the Tesseract.

In truth, Nebula had always doubted his ability to succeed. He’d been such a broken thing.

But not even Ronan could put a dent in where Loki stands now.

“You can do it,” she breathes. “You can end him.”

“Yes--I can.”

There’s no fragment in his voice that isn’t confidence, no hint that he doubts or fears. He has brought her an escape, and all she has returned is spite. He could have so easily killed her. “Why are you telling me this? Why did you show me these things?”

Loki leans against the wall. “I have the barest records for the last two infinity stones, and I cannot spare time to find them. There are not many I can trust in my place, and even fewer that I can risk being caught.”

Nebula blinks, confused and overwhelmed by the fact that someone could ever trust someone like her--not even Thanos. “But _why_? Why do you trust me with this?”

Turning his back, Loki paces towards the gauntlet. “You hate your father. I know that rage well, for my own and for yours. It is a rage I trust.” He pauses, glancing at her. “Even more so, I owe you a favor.”

Her throat goes dry. His blood still stains her hands, blood that was once no different to her than any of her other victims. “I would have _killed_ you--”

“You gave me a purpose,” Loki says. He lifts his chin, eyes daring her to find fault with his words. “I let go because there was nothing in the entire Nine Realms worth otherwise, and I would have done so again and again and again. You gave me reason to stay.”

Nebula’s brow cringes. The insufferable tears rise again, and she can’t clear her vision simply this time. One slips down the bridge of her nose. Speechless with shame and confusion, she can only swipe it away angrily.

Her entire life is crumbling to pieces.

But somehow the world looks more colorful, more wanting of her presence.

She wonders if this is how Loki felt, as she cut red lines into his flesh and burned scars into his skin. If he saw brightness at the end of a tunnel when he met her father and had a focal point to the rage.

She wonders if he is happier now, or if it is all still the same.

“I didn’t intend to give you purpose,” she says. “I hated you.”

Loki smiles. “Yet, when circumstance allowed, you listened. You spoke to me. Yesterday, you chose to sacrifice your old life to let me live. I find that very telling.”

She swallows.

Perhaps the reason that she followed him for this long was because she could see something more than the life she had.

To find the gems, there will doubtlessly be more lying, more killing--but for a purpose, and that is something she’s never really known. If they succeed, there might even be an end.

Maybe the world is terrible, but either way, they are free.

“Join me, Nebula,” Loki says, striding toward her. “Join me, and we will watch Thanos _burn_.”

Surrounded by stones that Thanos craves, on the only realm Thanos fears, Loki offers his hand.

Nebula takes it.

…

**Author's Note:**

> If there is interest, I may consider writing more. But as of now, after months of indecisiveness and inability to write coherently, this freaking story is done and posted. Finallyyy. XD (And hey, at least I got this out before AoU could destroy all of my headcannons.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! :) And if you so choose, [follow me on Tumblr - Loxxxlay](http://loxxxlay.tumblr.com).
> 
> Anyway, with that, I will dedicate this fic to the naysayers of Loki/Nebula - I managed to write this despite your rude, unwarranted input, so kindly suck it. XD


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